EmuMovies project update

[Circo]

I have once again found a better way to make my game previews.  Using a capture program called Fraps and using the latest version of the DIVX create package I can now capture video with no loss in frames and encode at 640x480 at 30fps with only a negligible size increase.  Example: A 1:20 PSX capture encoded at 320x240 15fps = 9MB using the old process.  Using my new process the same capture encoded at 640x480 30fps = 11MB.  The difference is astounding to say the least.  Because of this I have scrapped all sets that I had in development, and will re-capture and re-encode using the new process.  It's a shame because I was 200 captures into both the NES re-release and the PSX set.  So expect it to be awhile before there is a new EmuMovies release, but the new sets will be incredible, I PROMISE!  If like me you use these sets as a screensaver as well as in the preview windows you will notice no difference in the preview than you would in the actual game.  I only wish I had masters of my other releases so I could re-encode.

[gamecreature]

Screen saver? How would that work?

[Nologic]

Circo -

I have a question for you...would it be of any help if I was to create a automation script for loading & playing Roms, and performing a set capture time, followed by generic encoding?

Not sure if it would save you any time, but ideally it should save you some button pushing.

[gonzobrian]

Would you be abel to reseed some of your previous releases?

[Circo]

Circo -

I have a question for you...would it be of any help if I was to create a automation script for loading & playing Roms, and performing a set capture time, followed by generic encoding?

Not sure if it would save you any time, but ideally it should save you some button pushing.

Actually it could, although I have to run each capture through a video editor so there is no way to automate that.  But would help alot with the initial captures.

Screen saver? How would that work?

I use Mamewah so I will explain it from that angle although I have been told other front ends support this feature.  Mamewah has an option for a screensave to use avi files.  So for each emulator I set Mamewah to play it's previews after 3min of idle time.  So the cab looks like it is playing each game.  That is the main reason why the sequence of my previews is: Gameplay, Intro, Title Screen.  The screensaver acts as an attract mode and the title screens are so you can tell what the game is if you see something that you like.  The main purpose of the EmuMovies commercial pack is the screensaver mode as well.  If you place the commercials for each system in it's corresponding preview directory it will also randomly play classic tv commercials in between the game previews.

Would you be abel to reseed some of your previous releases?

Plan on looking into this over the weekend, have some torrents in the pipe that are not emumovies related.

[livelike]

Circo, I appreciate a lot all your work as many others do, and hope this may help you out. I found the following video resizing programs that you could give a try for all your previous movies:

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/   (Free, It should work in batch mode)

http://www.thedeemon.com/VideoEnhancer/   (could not find if it does batch mode)

The Video Enhancer promises to give a better output than other programs such as virtualdub

[Circo]

Circo, I appreciate a lot all your work as many others do, and hope this may help you out. I found the following video resizing programs that you could give a try for all your previous movies:

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/   (Free, It should work in batch mode)

http://www.thedeemon.com/VideoEnhancer/   (could not find if it does batch mode)

The Video Enhancer promises to give a better output than other programs such as virtualdub

[Nologic]

Okay sent you a PM...tho not sure if it was sent or not...no history of having sent you one....blah.

If all else fails email me at Nologic at planetquake dot com and we'll see if we can get things lined up that way.

[Circo]

Of course with the new encoder 320x240 got smaller as well...  What I am considering is making a HQ set 640x480 and a LQ set 320x240.

Sample File:

640x480 = 4,066KB
320x240 = 2,231KB

I really like the look of the higher quality file and HD space doesn't mean much to me when you can find 300GB HD on sell for $60.  But I did put a poll up so let me know what you think.

[Circo]

Okay sent you a PM...tho not sure if it was sent or not...no history of having sent you one....blah.

If all else fails email me at Nologic at planetquake dot com and we'll see if we can get things lined up that way.

I got it, let me sort out the details and I will get back to you.

[Nologic]

Sounds good, look forward to seeing what we can get done.

[Silver]

Sounds good... couple of questions...

Did the NES/PSX actually output 640x480? Where is this resolution size coming from?

If its the emulator outputting 640x480, then it must be scaling up from the original resolution... or have I missed something?

[gamecreature]

Screen saver? How would that work?

I use Mamewah so I will explain it from that angle although I have been told other front ends support this feature.  Mamewah has an option for a screensave to use avi files.  So for each emulator I set Mamewah to play it's previews after 3min of idle time.  So the cab looks like it is playing each game.  That is the main reason why the sequence of my previews is: Gameplay, Intro, Title Screen.  The screensaver acts as an attract mode and the title screens are so you can tell what the game is if you see something that you like.  The main purpose of the EmuMovies commercial pack is the screensaver mode as well.  If you place the commercials for each system in it's corresponding preview directory it will also randomly play classic tv commercials in between the game previews.

By golly, you're right. MaLa's got it too. I just never looked. And now I can see what you mean about the low res stuff. Bleah!

If someone was really clever, there'd be that game info in the corner of the video, like with music videos. 

[loadman]

Screen saver? How would that work?

For you in MaLa, see pic attached

[EDIT] D'oh! you worked it out   

[Circo]

Sounds good... couple of questions...

Did the NES/PSX actually output 640x480? Where is this resolution size coming from?

If its the emulator outputting 640x480, then it must be scaling up from the original resolution... or have I missed something?

Even though the original output resolutions of the games is much lower than the 640x480 resolution that I have settled on when you encode at a low resolution like 320x240 it is not near as sharp as the original.  In a preview window alone it does not really matter, it is so small that it looked fine.  Using them is screensaver mode at fullscreen it just does no cut it.

I have started on the PSX and NES sets and have finished "#-A" and I am very pleased with the results.  It takes a fair bit of time because I am doing the captures, editing in a video editor, then encoding and it takes 2X as long at the larger resolution, but it will be worth it.

If someone would like to take on the intellivision set, I will get you everything you need to do it.  Just throwing this out there, the new software that I am using takes up a heck of a lot less processing power.   I have tried for awhile now to put together sort of an emumovies team but have not had much success.  My free time is becoming more and more difficult to come by 30+, Salaried Job, Baby on the way... You get it. 

Full credit for your work would be given on the website, I could even get you a fancy emumovies email address

[Circo]

By golly, you're right. MaLa's got it too. I just never looked. And now I can see what you mean about the low res stuff. Bleah!

If someone was really clever, there'd be that game info in the corner of the video, like with music videos. 

Ahh, but that is why (when applicable) I include the into sequence and the Title Screen. 

[Silver]

Even though the original output resolutions of the games is much lower than the 640x480 resolution that I have settled on when you encode at a low resolution like 320x240 it is not near as sharp as the original.  In a preview window alone it does not really matter, it is so small that it looked fine.  Using them is screensaver mode at fullscreen it just does no cut it.

I have started on the PSX and NES sets and have finished "#-A" and I am very pleased with the results.

Good stuff, could you throw up a sample somewhere?

I'm thinking one of the reasons this works quite well is that when the video is re-sampled from 320x240 to 640x480 (or whatever) it will be going through a filter which usually has the side effect of blurring slightly (think bilinear filtering in 3D). This probably helps with the compression. (for example, I used to stick in a slight blur filter when compressing videos in virtualdub - it results in higher compression and video that is more pleasing to the eye as it has less artifacts).

[Circo]

I have been capturing at 640x480 since the very beginning and then encoding at 320x240, the only thing that I have really changed is encoding at 640x480 now.  So now I have lost the blur plus the blocky artifacts.

I will see about getting some samples up.

[livelike]

Of course with the new encoder 320x240 got smaller as well...  What I am considering is making a HQ set 640x480 and a LQ set 320x240.

Sample File:

640x480 = 4,066KB
320x240 = 2,231KB

Circo, what you are considering, is redoing all your previous sets to a 640x480 resolution, to offer a Low and HQ versions (if so, how long do you estimate this would take)? or where you talking about continuing from now on working on  640x480 resolution?

[Circo]

Right now I am just focused on the new sets being 640x480, NES was a set that I have intended to redo for almost a year now.  It was the first set that I ever did and many of the previews do not even show gameplay, they were whatever the intro sequence was. 

Offering both resolutions is an idea since it is just a matter of re-encoding them to a smaller resolution, but keeping two copies of each set seeded would be next to impossible, so I still have not fully commited to doing it.  As far as redoing all of the older sets that would be a lot of work, I already have over a year and a half of effort put into the project so I will not commit to that. I may decide to do that later on but it would be a year or two out.  The playstation set at over 2000 games will take me close to probably 4-6 months to finish at the pace I am going.  Plus once I finish the consoles I would really like to do a high resolution MAME set that fits with the rest of my sets.  Gameplay followed by intros/titles, cdbrowns set is very nice but it was still an automated process, vs. many of the games that do not have good examples of gameplay I actually play myself and record a clip to use in the preview.  Once all of that was finished I may look at redoing the older sets.  But that is a long time out.

[Marky_1979]

PM sent

[Circo]

Well just came out of my hole, 2 weeks without a day off from work got in the way of the important stuff! 

Anyway, I think I have decided exactly how I am going to do these new sets.  Here is another example:




This is the original preview for the Atari 7800 version of Ace of Aces:

Width - 320 pixels
Height - 240 pixels
Duration - :29
Frame Rate - 30fps
Data Rate - 52kbps
Size - 1.51MB
Video Sample Size - 24 bit
Video Compression - DivX



Here is the brand new preview of the game, this is not remastered this is a completely new preview:

Width - 640 pixels
Height - 480 pixels
Duration - :35
Frame Rate - 30fps
Data Rate - 111kbps
Size - 3.90MB
Video Sample Size - 24 bit
Video Compression - DivX





Comments?

[Circo]

PM sent

Still working out the kinks 

[jcrouse]

Comments?

Well, on the HiQ one, on my system, when the splash screen pops up at the end I get a weird mask type artifact on the screen. It is hard to explain and I can't take a screen shot. If needed, I can snap a pic with my camera so you can see what I mean.

John

[Circo]

Comments?

Well, on the HiQ one, on my system, when the splash screen pops up at the end I get a weird mask type artifact on the screen. It is hard to explain and I can't take a screen shot. If needed, I can snap a pic with my camera so you can see what I mean.

John

I just played it and do not see anything unusual.

#1 Are you running the latest version of DivX (6.4 is the latest)

#2 Where exactly on the screen is the artifact?  I do notice that the Atari 7800 logo gets hard to read due to white letters on a white background.

#3 I imagine by "Splash Screen" you are referring to the title screen, am I correct?

[mr.Curmudgeon]

Comments?

Both played fine on my system. Of course, the larger one looks bigger for some reason! 



mrC

[jcrouse]

Comments?

Well, on the HiQ one, on my system, when the splash screen pops up at the end I get a weird mask type artifact on the screen. It is hard to explain and I can't take a screen shot. If needed, I can snap a pic with my camera so you can see what I mean.

John

I just played it and do not see anything unusual.

#1 Are you running the latest version of DivX (6.4 is the latest)

#2 Where exactly on the screen is the artifact?  I do notice that the Atari 7800 logo gets hard to read due to white letters on a white background.

#3 I imagine by "Splash Screen" you are referring to the title screen, am I correct?

#1. Not sure.
#2. I'll email you a pic.
#3. Yes. See the pic.

John